(ANSAmed) – ANKARA, MAY 29 – A Turkish court ruled today the closure of the only gay rights association in Turkey after the prosecutor had said it violated the family protection and public morality laws, Turkish agency Anadolu reported. The agency added that the ruling was issued by a court in the Beyoglu district, in Istanbul’s centre, against the LambdaIstanbul group set up in 1993. Three years ago, the deputy governor of Ankara asked for the closure of the ‘Kaos’ association in which gays and lesbians living in the Turkish capital had joined, calling for the application of a norm which bans associations “against the law and morality”. However, the Ankara prosecutor rejected the request. Unlike the other Muslim states, homosexuality has never been a crime in Turkey, but is surrounded by a widespread social criticism with the exception of Istanbul’s European districts where there are various places of meeting reserved for homosexuals, without this sparking off scandal. Nevertheless, there are no laws for protecting the homosexuals from discrimination. (ANSAmed).

Worldwide Muslim reaction is now building against Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ movie, “Fitna,” which was released on March 27, 2008. Approximately 1,200,000 people saw the film in the first 24 hours via Internet, originally on one site but now spread to numerous sites of may descriptions.

There have been protest demonstrations, under control so far, in a half dozen Muslim countries, but with more planned, including protests scheduled in various European nations. Whether larger or smaller in extent than the massive protests about the cartoons in a Danish newspaper ( and also published in France ) approximately a year ago, we can expect yet another onrush of hysteria about perceived insults to Islam on the part of tens of millions of Muslims in the days ahead.

All of which disgusts me completely. I am a scholar of religion and have serious knowledge of many of the religions of the world and have sincere respect for most faiths of mankind, and friends who are Hindus and Buddhists and Christians and Jews, and more, but the issue of Islam is an altogether different subject.

No religion on Earth is as intolerant, bigoted, and irrational. Islam, when all is said, is a form of proto-Fascism that is the enemy of all men and women of good will.

To express my outrage at both Islam and at its deluded defenders, and since I also am a graphic artist, two cartoons of my creation are now being made available to anyone who wants to use them as a means to criticize Islam, a sick religion that deserves ridicule more than anything else since it is nothing but a system of self-righteous anti-democratic puritanism that is fundamentally opposed to free speech.

Followers of this so-called “religion of peace” will, it seems certain, call for the deaths of anyone who runs these cartoons, be advised of that, and they assuredly will call for the death of the artist, but all such reaction will prove the point of the cartoons and of my other criticisms, and the criticisms of many other well informed people.

There is only one request to make from anyone who uses the cartoons. It would be wrong to associate the art with swastikas in an attempt to reinforce the message that Islam is Fascist in character. The symbol is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, as well as Jains, Bahai’s, and many others, traditions that have nothing at all to do with the Nazis, and we should not perpetuate misleading stereotypes.